Benjamin Bell of the CIVITAS Galleries Ltd. of Madison, WI is the featured speaker at the Ancient Coin Club of Chicago meeting at the Chicago International Coin Fair. Mr. Bell's topic is "Striking Eastward: the Venetian Ducat in the Orient".

The Ancient Coin Club of Chicago meeting will be at 11:00 AM on May 1, 2004. The CICF is at the Holiday Inn O'Hare, 5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL. Admission to our meeting is free. There is a $5.00 admission fee to get into the rest of the coin fair.

Benjamin Bell is co-director of the CIVITAS Galleries Ltd., near Madison WI. He has 22 years of numismatic experience, during which he interned at the ANA museum, and was a cataloguer for the Classical Numismatic Group in Lancaster, PA. He earned a MA in Museum Ethnography from the University of London, where he wrote his dissertation on eastern Imitations of the Venetian Ducat in the British Museum. His undergraduate studies were conducted at Beloit College in Wisconsin.

The Venetian Ducat is a gold coin introduced in 1284 and struck without significant design changes until 1707. It was standard coin used in the trade with the Orient. This carried it through the Levantine States of the Middle East, and into India, Egypt and elsewhere in Africa. Other Italian cities copied the distinctive ducat's design to facilitate their own trade. It was copied by other groups, many of which didn't identify themselves on their imitative coinage.

This meeting marks the Ancient Coin Club of Chicago's third anniversary. The ACCC was founded by Chicago area coin collectors in 2001. The club meets in downtown Chicago for monthly meetings on ancient and medieval numismatic topics. The meetings take a discussion format, instead of a lecture. This brings the entire base of knowledge of all of the members into play. This club is about sharing knowledge, not running an organization and studying Robert's Rules of Order. One member will lead a discussion, all of the members adding their expertise and asking questions to direct the discussion.

The club started with 10 people meeting at a restaurant. The Ancient Coin Club of Chicago now has 22 members with such noted numismatists and coin dealers as Harlan Berk, Curtis Clay, John Vander Weit, Phil Davis and Mark Wieclaw.